


Synchronization

by overtture



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Introspection, Metaphors, No Dialogue, Platonic Relationships, Relationship Study, Speculation, Technoblade-centric (Video Blogging RPF), ask to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27602060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overtture/pseuds/overtture
Summary: Technoblade, from his birth to the rebellion and revolution of Manberg, between him and his loved ones.1. Nobody else understands it, any of it. Techno, no many how many people are at his side or not, no matter how he loses his life, will die alone. (And then he meets Philza.)2. Phil is an entire world. Wilbur is the duality of balance. Tommy is an explosion. Tubbo is an ocean. His love language was the thrill of warfare and simple pastimes, and they get it.Embrace it,even. (When you love something, you let it go.)3. Wilbur was supposed to be safe, when he’d left Techno’s careful watch.He was supposed to be safe.(Techno swallows his contentment and plans for the beginning of the end.)4. He’d rather kill them than see either of them become a leader in these cursed, power-hungry lands. Not after how it’d claimed Wilbur. In the end, he’s glad he’ll go out with them. (Technoblade lives to regret it. All of it. They all do.)5. It’s not the same. It’s not the same without Wilbur, even more so. But it’s him, it’s them, and it’s all of them together. (Somehow between them all, they cobble up enough to make it to dawn.)
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 179





	Synchronization

**Author's Note:**

> ITS ALMOST 4AM AND IM DYIGN BUt please take this, its less coherent than my other works bc i proofread those and stuff and i wrote this in an hour while sleep deprived, but the muse waits for no man and this is more of a character study vent than anything Solid. that fucking finale. that fuckign FINALE YALL!! god. 
> 
> im gonna sleep and probably just give this a hard edit tomorrow but enjoy regardless <3

From a very young age, Technoblade knew how he would die.

The context then had been different, sure. He’d been born into the cruelty of the Nether-- it didn’t matter which world, the Nether was the Nether, and the Nether kills everything that refuses to adapt to it. Even then, death came easily to those whose skill couldn’t outweigh their luck.

That was all it was. From a very young age, more luck than skill, the thought passed him many times as he toed the line of death’s domain in his fight for maturity. Eventually, he learned his lessons, honed his talents, sharpened his skills until he was on par with the Hell he’d been born into, and even outpaced it at times.

Even as his skill comforts him, as the Overworld’s simplicities quelled and soothed his rougher edges, refining him into the man he would become, he knows. No matter how much he fills his life with war, company, love, simple pleasures, he knows.

Nobody else understands it, his ways, his nature, his mannerisms, and his meanings.

Technoblade, no many how many people are at his side or not, no matter how he loses his life, will die alone.

And then he meets Philza.

* * *

He meets Phil and it's overwhelming and simple simultaneously. 

There’s a kind of depth and nature to him you only see at a sideways squint, sunlight through leaves. Phil gives and gives and gives and Techno is a man with too much and not enough. It bounces off him like a brick wall and ricochets right back to the other man. 

It’s easy. It’s simple. It’s comforting. No demands, no desires, no complicated concepts, just a kind of knowing.

Wilbur is the opposite, almost. 

The same breed they are, the same kind of oxymoron overflow and drought of peace of mind. Raving passion and yet a gentle, still-water calm. Duality mastered as an art at the cost of a delicate balance.

Tommy is an explosion. 

Too much at once, a blast radius of damage that hurts even those it wasn’t meant for, and then a complete and total void left over. Tommy is a flash, a supernova, pure renewing energy.

Tubbo is an ocean. 

An endless stillness, repetition, and tides that are unpredictable until you study the pull and push. The fury of a storm, the danger of a hurricane, a flood you can’t escape, and yet, can see coming a mile away.

Techno feels at home, with them. They get him just as he gets them. It's as easy as breathing and twice as dangerous. They got on like a house on fire and caused just as much destruction in their wake regardless, even as they fight.

It’s nice, having people who understand when their swords clash. Technoblade’s love language was the physical thrill of warfare and simple pastimes between and with himself and those he cares about, and they _get it. Embrace it,_ even _._

Wild hearts, he thinks as they stray different paths once more, to Dream lands, to the Antarctic. They can’t be chained. Not successfully. Not happily.

When you love something, you let it go.

When Technoblade is recruited to Pogtopia, he would’ve flinched seeing the state of them if he was the kind of man to do so.

Wilbur strains under an untouchable weight, impossible pressure none of them can safely alleviate. Two landmines under either foot as he holds a country on his back like an Atlas who could release the world if he truly wished but couldn’t get his bleeding heart to agree.

Tommy is comforted by Wilbur’s façade and Tubbo lays as still as he can, his neck in the jaws of the sleeping lion that is Manberg.

Techno takes a deep breath and begins to farm.

* * *

The cracks deepen, the weight grows ever heavier in the arms of the exhausted, and Technoblade can see the dark creep down the empty hall of Pogtopia.

It was only time, he thinks as he hears word of his brother through Tommy’s panicked shrieking.

Technoblade watches as Wilbur gives it an inch-- and it doesn’t quite take a mile, no. At least, not instantly. It takes its time, slow enough nobody can truly catch it until it's got its claws in him, warping him beyond his own perception. 

It’s sickening. Something in Techno longs to be put out of his misery, hurts and aches endlessly. He had thought Wilbur stronger than this, these pressures, these connections. He had thought Wilbur's survival instincts would save him. He had thought he himself would’ve noticed before it had gotten this far. 

Wilbur was supposed to be safe when he’d left Techno’s careful watch.

He was supposed to be safe. 

And then he’d given and given and given until there was nothing left to give and all he can desire is the destruction of the nation that took everything, even his sanity.

Techno can’t blame him. Can’t at all, really. But he can blame Schlatt, the damn coward who rots upon his Blackstone podium and leers at the nation that feeds his gluttonous appetite, oozing smug pride and pure, unfiltered _hunger._

Techno can’t blame Wilbur. He can’t blame any of the pawns on the board, really. He can’t even truly blame Schlatt at the end of the day, as easy as he knows it would be, as he knows everyone else will.

It’s hard to face the truth. It’s hard to do the right thing even when it hurts.

Technoblade swallows the contentment they give him in their smiles and laughter, and plans for the beginning of the end.

* * *

Technoblade lives by his principles.

In the end, with oblivion on the horizon and apocalypse in his rear-view, when the world cannibalizes itself, gorging on TNT and fire, Technoblade will survive.

He always does.

But in the end, on his own, he knows that between the people who love him and his morals, his ethics, there is a decision to be made.

They love him. This isn’t to say he doesn’t love them, too, but when he lines up the pieces, it isn’t enough. It’s never enough. Hard wars, harder decisions. If he learned a single thing from the Nether, one that sticks with him beside everything and one that would die with him too, he knows that the best decision you could ever make in spite of everything is one you can live with.

Morals are your rights and wrongs. Ethics are the decisions and choices posed and chosen by those predefined rights and wrongs.

Right and wrong are life and death. Right and wrong are subjective and brutal. It’s truth. 

You either have to give or take in these worlds. 

Technoblade’s truth will not be bound and locked down by a ruler’s word, no matter how honey sweet. No matter who, even those he cherishes above the rest. He will not give, not the way Wilbur did and Phil will. Not the way Tubbo does and Tommy eventually will be forced to.

It’s bittersweet, standing across a short stretch of land from Tommy. There is a prideful passion in those eyes as he forces himself to his full height and rolls his shoulders back. There’s fear, there, too. 

It’s the same clenched-jaw look Tommy had given him across the Pit, the same furious stare Tommy had given him across a field as Techno tore his footwork and posture apart in sparring despite the successful damage and completed maneuver they’d been practicing.

Even in that strong, leader’s stance, he sees himself. In his locked knees, he sees his younger self, trapped in a world determined to pick him off. In his shaking shoulders, he sees a young man, out of his depth and trapped in a feedback loop of adrenaline. In his clammy, white-knuckled grip, he sees himself just a few months past as he cut down the first mob of a thousand, the first dedicated step in his plot to bring them to where they stood now.

Technoblade tries to explain in his own way, even as he’s forced to witness Tommy’s anger bleed out into fear, horror, and hurt of his own.

“Don’t do this, Techno,” Phil’s voice echoes over the wind, the smoke, the rubble of the podium, and the great ravine torn between him and the friends he’s torn himself free from.

Freedom has never felt so bitter on his tongue. It’s a taste he can live with, between them and a life of misery and hate under the tyrant a title like president would turn Tommy or Tubbo into.

He’d rather kill them than see either of them become a leader in these cursed, power-hungry lands. With a track-record like Dream’s world, there was no option.

Not after the aftershocks. Not after how it’d claimed Wilbur.

Technoblade won’t let it take anyone else. Even if it means he has to hurt them. 

They might never understand. Phil was too loose, too willing to go with the flow and bend at the whims of those who had him wrapped around their pinkies. Tubbo was too trusting, too faithful in other’s goodwill, and purposefully blind to the natures of those he loved. Tommy was too headstrong, like himself. Too dedicated to his own morals with a pride that would never allow him to abandon his ethics.

Wilbur--

Techno has never felt more alive than he does as Withers rise from sand and bone, explosions consume a country, and a family is torn asunder in the crossfire, and he loathes it as much as he loves it.

He already knows how this will go.

Tubbo will be cautious but hear him out. Agree, a little. Likely trust him with time, even if he never truly accepts it. Another collection of firework scars, another lesson he doesn’t entirely retain even as he matures further from it.

Tommy would loathe him, likely for a very, very long time. Life would go on and Tommy would shake that anger as it aged, but that bitterness would stay. They would go on to ram heads on every other matter as they always had. 

Phil would be with him from day one, understanding as he always was. Always giving more of himself than he had for other’s wellbeing. Maybe attempting to sway his view, but otherwise being a silent, supportive figure.

Wilbur is gone. 

And history will repeat.

So he destroys the land, he cuts each of them down until he has to catch himself on his sword and lands hard on his knees, out of ammunition and breath and apologies for something he’s not entirely sorry for.

Techno lives to regret it. All of it.

* * *

It’s too quiet, afterward.

The residents and allies move on, new lands, new lives, new homes, and new friends, finding joy in their new freedoms despite their losses. 

Technoblade laments, self-pities, and turn his face to the future to avoid his past as he always did, and stops himself before he let his heart cannibalize itself a little more. It’s better to stop than pick at memories of better, happier times for everything he did wrong, every road he never took, and every decision he never saw at the time. 

Every mistake that cost him Wilbur. That cost them their victory and lands. Their homes.

Techno stands in the ruins of what was once a beautiful land sometime later. There’s grass, now. Some water flow. Nature reclaiming the great crater.

For a while, he is alone.

Eventually, Phil joins him. They sit at the pier’s edge together, feet in the water.

Eventually, Tubbo joins them. He leans back on his hands and reminds them of a funny Wilbur story.

Eventually, Tommy joins them. He doesn’t say much but laughs when Tubbo stutters through part of the punchline’s context, recounting Wilbur’s grand statements with gusto and grand gesturing.

Wild hearts weren’t meant for love. Not the kind you shared, anyway. It was a recipe for self-destruction. In the end, he’s glad he’ll go out with them even if it’s not the same. It’s not the same without Wilbur, even more so.

But it’s him, and it’s them, and it’s all of them together, and somehow between them all, they cobble up enough to make it to dawn.


End file.
